


Past the Setting Sun

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Gen, Waiting, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: They promised they'd be home before the harvest was over.Jaskier waits.[Written for the Witcher Flash Fic challenge.]
Relationships: Eskel & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion & Lambert
Comments: 33
Kudos: 536
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #010





	Past the Setting Sun

_“We’ll be home before the harvest’s over.”_

They’d _promised_.

Jaskier leans against the fence, staring down the dusty road, south towards Nilfgaard and the war. They don’t get the news quickly, here in Lettenhove - they’re too far from anything important. A king’s messenger comes through maybe every month or so, bearing weeks-old news and sometimes letters; besides that and the tax collectors, no one really bothers to visit Lettenhove. It’s quiet, and calm, and bucolicly peaceful.

Jaskier hates it.

Well.

No, he doesn’t. He hates being _trapped_ here.

Back before the war, he traveled a lot, all up and down the continent, and it was downright _refreshing_ to come home to Lettenhove every fall, slotting back into the steady rhythms of the estate as though he’d never left. He may technically be the Viscount de Lettenhove, but his younger sister is far, far better at running the estate than he could ever be. She keeps everything ticking over like well-oiled clockwork, and her eldest son bids fair to be just as competent and calm and steady as she is, so Jaskier has long since named young Jacek his heir, and knows Lettenhove will prosper under his hands when Jaskier is gone, just as it has under Bianka’s. And they were _all_ happier when he only showed up for a few months every year, breezing in to be cheerful Uncle Jaskier to Bianka’s children and _that young rascal_ to the villagers, a bringer of stories and songs and small trinkets, gone again in the spring before his general _Jaskier-ness_ can grow aggravating to them and the endless rhythms of the estate can become stifling to him.

But now - now that Jaskier _can’t_ leave, now that he’s stuck here _waiting_ \- now it’s like the simple wooden fences around the fields are bars of iron, and every day it feels like the estate gets smaller, and it gets harder and harder to _breathe_.

It’s not that he has a shortage of things to do. The estate is dreadfully shorthanded. War eats men, Jaskier knows, and it has eaten so many of Lettenhove’s. The baker’s son, and the chandler’s, and the weaver’s. The schoolmaster and half of the stableboys and a third of the farmers.

The stablemaster, and the blacksmith, and the brewer.

Jaskier shouldn’t care more about _some_ of Lettenhove’s men than others, but he can’t help it.

They promised they’d be home by the end of harvest-time.

The grain is golden in the fields; the apples are russet on the trees. The pigs have been turned out into the forest to feast on acorns before their coming demise. The cellars of the manor are beginning to fill with barrels and sacks and jars, all the food that will see the estate through the winter; the villagers are sharpening their scythes and pestering the estate’s half-trained hedgewitch about when there will be a stretch of clear weather for the reaping. Jaskier himself has been chipping in wherever he can: he’s taken over the schoolmaster’s job in its entirety, turning all his Oxenfurt-trained bardic talents to the task of getting a dozen children to sit still and learn their letters; he’s set about learning everything he can from the baker and the chandler and the weaver, so when they need a hand, he can provide it; he’s even tried to decipher the brewer’s near-illegible notes and re-labeled the barrels of spirits so that people know what’s in them.

It’s not enough. He lies awake each night with his mind spinning and spinning like a child’s toy, never coming to a halt; he cannot sleep until exhaustion finally drags him down in the wee hours of the morning, and rises again before dawn, bleary-eyed and yet unable to remain abed, jittering with energy that sends him roaming through the manor’s corridors, startling the poor housemaids as they rise to begin their day’s work, and startling them worse when he joins them in carrying firewood or scrubbing floors, just so he has something to _do_.

He should be there - should be down at the southern border with his men. But he is the only adult male of the viscounty’s line, and he is not _allowed_ to go off and get himself killed, by the king’s firm decree. And he _would_ get killed; he’s no sort of warrior. He’d die in the first skirmish, like as not, and leave young Jacek with the heavy mantle of the title, the responsibility for every life in Lettenhove. And he’d do no good to _them_ , either. They’d just have to protect him, instead of concentrating on keeping their own skins intact.

They’re trained as warriors, he has to keep reminding himself of that. Old Vesemir was a mercenary, and he raised his sons to know which end of a sword was which, and how to use it, too. They’re _good_ , Jaskier knows. He’s met a great many warriors over his years of wandering, and none of them could match Vesemir’s sons for skill. But war is full of chaos - so all the songs and stories agree - and mere strength and skill and courage might not be enough.

They _promised_ , though. And Jaskier has never known them to fail to keep their promises.

The thought is childish, he knows that. As if a mere promise could keep them safe in the chaos of a war against Nilfgaard’s black-armored legions. _The ants_ , he’d called them in a song once, marching in perfect lockstep, guided by the malevolent intelligence lurking in their nest far to the south. He’s heard that Emperor Emhyr expressed ‘extreme displeasure’ when he heard that song. Jaskier’s sort of proud of that.

(He’s also glad that there’s very little to link Jaskier, traveling troubadour, with the Viscount Julian Alfred Pankratz of Lettenhove.)

But childish or not, the promise is all Jaskier has to cling to. That, and the knowledge that as hard as each of them will fight to defend themselves, they’ll fight all the harder for their brothers.

They’ll be home before the end of harvest-time.

He paces the boundaries of the estate when he has nothing else to do - when he cannot sleep, in the long autumn evenings when the grain in the light of the setting sun looks like nothing quite so much as an ocean of molten gold. He ought to write a song of it, but the words won’t come, the tune won’t play.

He wants to spend a long, slightly drunken afternoon helping Lambert come up with new and inadvisable flavors for gin, to sell to the overdressed idiots in the city who are willing to spend far too much money just because no one else will have anything like these bottles in _their_ cellars.

He wants to sit outside the smithy, singing in perfect time with the metronome-steady blows of Eskel’s hammer, making up steadily sillier verses of old songs until he finally finds something that makes Eskel put down his hammer and laugh, the sound as warm and beautiful as summer sunshine.

He wants - oh, _how_ he wants - to lean against the wall of the stable and watch Geralt saddle the fractious, irritable mare on whom he lavishes such deep affection, murmuring soft words to her as she sidles and fidgets, until at last she’s ready and Jaskier can swing up onto his own gelding’s back and lead the way out onto the forest trails which delight them both, or the broad meadows where they can race each other, Jaskier laughing and Geralt smiling that little, sweet smile that only his brothers and Jaskier ever get to see.

He wants to spend a long winter evening cozy beside the fire of their house - smaller and yet somehow far more comfortable than Lettenhove Manor - passing around a bottle of Lambert’s least objectionable gin and telling stories and playing endless rounds of Gwent for forfeits of acorns or roasted chestnuts.

He wants to fall asleep on their hearth and wake up with a blanket draped over him - the one that Lambert made especially for such occasions - and his head resting on Eskel’s shoulder and Geralt and Lambert curled up around him like puppies, and the fire burned down to coals, and the smell of sweetened oat porridge filling the air.

They’ll be home by the end of harvest-time.

They _promised_.

The apples are gathered in; the berries are picked and turned to jam. The pigs are herded in from the forests, and Jaskier takes the children off to the other side of the estate and tells them stories for a whole long day; he’s never had the stomach for the slaughtering days. The gardens are picked bare, the vegetables pickled and jarred and tucked away in cellars and pantries for the coming cold.

The hedgewitch declares that there will be a five-day stretch of good weather before the rains begin, and every able-bodied adult on the estate prepares for the reaping - even Jaskier, though his duties will not include the wielding of a scythe. Bianka - clever woman - has stationed him high on a hill, under a tree which has not yet lost its leaves, and told him to play tunes to keep people smiling, keep the rhythm of the reaping, keep them from remembering that there ought to be so many more men in the fields beside them.

He plays until his fingers bleed, and lets the blood drip down onto the yellowing grass. Perhaps there’s something to the old legend that the blood of the lord can revitalize the land - it seems little enough to give to Lettenhove, when it has lost so much this year. Bianka tuts over his bloody fingers, and wraps them, but does not tell him to keep from playing. Her own Patryk is one of those who left to join the army - as a quartermaster, not a warrior, but the danger still remains.

Jaskier walks the fences again in the evenings, not quite able to bear the thought of sitting down and pretending all is well. Day by day, the fields are reaped and the grain tied into sheaves, stacked into tidy heaps waiting to be hauled away to the threshing barn. Day by day, Jaskier’s heart grows heavier in his chest, until he begins to wonder if it has turned from flesh and blood to iron, or stone.

If Lettenhove’s men were home, the reaping would take three days; since they are not, it takes the full five, from dawn to dusk, the children bringing food and water to the weary women in the fields, Jaskier playing and playing as the blood drips down, his tunes setting the rhythm of the scythes as they swing and swing again.

It’s nearly dusk on the fifth day when the work is done - all but the last sheaf, which Bianka will cut tomorrow, to mark the end of the reaping and the start of the feast. Jaskier forgoes dinner; he’s not hungry, and cannot bear to sit and smile and make conversation as if everything is well. He goes walking again, instead, south along the fences, watching the setting sun gild the shorn stalks of grain until it sinks behind the distant hills and the waxing moon turns everything instead to silver shadows.

There’s grain growing along the fence, too short and wild to be worth reaping. Jaskier leans on the fence and plucks the kernels from a single strand, collecting a little heap of them atop a fencepost. A breeze picks up, trailing cold fingers down the back of Jaskier’s neck, and he cups his hand over the tiny palmful of kernels as the breeze attempts to steal them.

From down the southern road, there is a sound.

Jaskier looks up; the road is a silver carpet unrolling, dappled with the shadows of leafless trees. He can’t see past the bend. But there _was_ a sound, and there it is again:

Someone whistling an old, old tune. And the slow, steady tramp of marching feet.

He should go back to the estate - should yell an alarm - should do anything but stand there, staring at the bend in the road, and wonder if he’s finally gone mad.

The whistling gets closer, louder, and Jaskier _recognizes_ that off-key, cheerful tune.

He vaults the fence and is sprinting down the road without even realizing he’s going to move, and he’s halfway to the bend when the first figures appear, fading out of the dimness, and Jaskier _knows_ them. Bianka’s Patryk, leading them, with one arm around the weaver’s son, who has a bandage wound around his jaw. The baker’s son, limping but sturdy; the chandler’s son, with one sleeve tied up and no arm in it; the schoolmaster, with a patch across one eye. Farmers and stableboys, some of them leaning on each other, many limping, all injured, and he knows if he stops to count, there will be fewer than there ought to be, but he cannot stop, because there, _there:_

At the back of the little crowd, the whistler, flanked by two silent giants: Lambert, and Geralt, and Eskel.

Back before the harvest ends.

They _promised_.

*

(He weeps, that night, for the scars they have earned, the sorrow in their eyes. For the way Eskel flinches from the firelight as it falls upon his marred face, the new rasp in Geralt’s voice, the bitter anger in Lambert’s words. But he falls asleep on their hearth, and wakes with his head on Eskel’s shoulder, Geralt and Lambert wrapped around him, and the fire is burnt to embers but the hearth is warm, and they are _home_.)


End file.
